Facebook Most Trusted by the Young as Snapchat and Blogs Score Poorly Among the Old

A report by Accenture Interactive’s Acquity Group called the Next Generation of Commerce Study that looks at the way digital technologies such as social media are shaping customer preferences has revealed glaring preferences between different age sets when it comes to social media and branding. For instance upon being asked which social media channel they trusted when it came to content created by brands, young people were more receptive to Facebook and traditional print media (newspapers) while the old stuck to their guns and distrusted new media.

As can be seen from the above chart, Facebook and print newspapers are trusted more by millennials while Snapchat and blogs are least trusted by older people. This means that younger people are more likely to buy into the hype created by brands on Facebook but this won’t resonate well with older people.

As expected, people who are older than 50 years are not likely to try a new product or service from ads seen on social media while those who are younger are open to such ideas. Snapchat unsurprisingly scores very high among the younger age bracket. YouTube showed a linear decline as the age increases.

Going viral is what every marketer wants to achieve if they launch a campaign on social media. Videos are one of the methods to go viral fast and it was found that they are 49% more likely to be shared on social media. Also, a post by a brand that has been shared multiple times is 17% more likely to be reshared on social media by this age group.\

Finally, there was the question of how likely one is able to share various types of content with their networks. People are most likely to share a funny video or a video that spreads awareness for a cause. On the other end, people are least likely to share a link to a product that you purchased.

In summary this report has several highlights:

1. Social media is still used effectively by a predominantly younger audience and marketers need to make sure the campaigns they come up with resonate well with them.

2. Social media use has risen exponentially in the last decade but people still trust the traditional media sources, namely newspapers

3. If you want your campaign to go viral, use videos as your main tool. They are 49% more likely to be shared on social media and 75% more likely be shown within the social circles of the targeted audiences.